A Pyre of Crosses
by Nokomiss
Summary: A House of 1000 Corpses scene filler. Rufus Firefly and the police car on Halloween. Contains OtisBaby, and if you squint, RufusBaby and RufusOtis.


A Pyre of Crosses

_Rufus Firefly gen (with vague Otis/Baby, and, if you squint just right, Rufus/Baby and Rufus/Otis.) Rated R (of course), 728 words_

Disclaimer: All characters/familiar situations belong to the ineffable Rob Zombie, who wins at life.

Notes: Written for Easilyabused's drabble prompt wondering what Rufus was doing with the police car on Halloween.

* * *

"Rufus, would you be a dear and get the dead fucking pig out of the living room?" Mama asked, pouting and brushing at a smatter of blood on her lacy decolletage. "I don't want him stinkin' up the place to high heaven, not before our little celebration tonight."

Rufus nodded, and drug the body (by the shoulders, since Mama had shot him in the head; Rufus knew better than to leave a smear of blood and brains and bone through the house, since often as not he was the one to clean it up) to the basement, enjoying the hollow thump as feet hit the cellar stairs one by one.

He didn't get to do a lot of killin' - Otis had taken the alpha male spot of the family, not caring in the least how much bigger Rufus had always been. Rufus had once tried to smash Otis's face with a hammer, one day when frustrated and bored and wishing that he was the one who got the prettiest cheerleaders and the reverent smiles from Baby.

Otis hadn't so much as fucking blinked, had only caught Rufus's hand as the hammer swung down (Rufus still didn't understand how the smaller man had stopped the blow, except maybe he really did have Satan's power working for him) and had grinned at him in that batshit crazy way, eyes gleaming and teeth dark in the dim light.

"Next time, you'd best get the job done," Otis had said, hand still warm over Rufus's, "because if you try something so fucking stupid again, you're going to be singing sweet songs with Holy Miss Moly."

Rufus did not respond as Otis laughed (the laugh he saved normally for when he rammed into screaming girls with flesh and blade) and said, "Well, fuck me gently with a chainsaw, I shoulda known that you'd only show you had a pair of balls once, then go belly-up with shame like the shitstain you are."

Rufus had glared, then, wishing that he had a way with words so he could tell the spindly Albino bastard exactly what he thought of him, but instead he had just grunted something Otis would think of as agreement and stalked off to practice shooting in the woods.

From that point, Otis had been the one the women had looked up to, no matter how he talked to them, and Rufus had become the quiet one who fixed things up and cleaned things and found himself pinned more and more by responsibility as Otis and Baby and even Mama ran wild and free.

So that night, while Baby killed a bunny and Otis threw crosses to form a pyre, Rufus went back to the house and fetched the cop car, turning up the Allman Brothers and kicking back a beer as he zoomed over fields towards the cemetery.

("_Bring the fucking cop car," Otis had told him. "In case things get out of hand."_

"_What could get out of hand?" Rufus asked, perplexed._

_A low chuckle. "Everything."_

_Otis always thought of everything._)

When he got there, he resisted the urge to keep plowing straight on into Otis and finally seeing if he were man or demon, mainly because Baby was there, all angel-light and laughing as she leapt around the pyre, giggling over her triumph over the bunny. She gave him a coppery red kiss as he climbed out of the car, and Rufus thought that Mama was right, Baby was an angel.

Otis read a sermon that Rufus couldn't understand but knew the meaning of anyway, felt the dark power of the words and the delicious holy sin as the crosses flashed aflame and the bunny burned (brown hair glimmering around fake fur that burned acrid and sweet).

And Rufus saw the way Otis eyed Baby, the way flames reflected in pale unfeeling eyes, and wished for a warm, beautiful moment that the hammer was still in his hand and he had moved just that much quicker, just that much less predictable, and the metal had smashed home ruining derisive flesh and kept those eyes from fucking their angel of a sister.

But Rufus was not the strong one, not in the way that mattered, so he stood silently, a dead man's shirt stretched tight over his shoulders, as he fulfilled the role that had been set out for him.

fin.


End file.
